Jon Hilkevitch

ColumnistGetting AroundWriter

Jon Hilkevitch is the transportation reporter and Getting Around columnist for the Chicago Tribune. In 2001, a team of Tribune reporters co-led by Hilkevitch was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism for their series “Gateway to Gridlock,” which chronicled the capacity crisis confronting the airline industry and the nation’s commercial airports. Hilkevitch joined the Tribune in 1979 after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the proud father of an airline pilot.

Recent Articles

Chicago aviation authorities have failed to produce convincing evidence that keeping open all the diagonal runways at O'Hare International Airport would increase the risk of planes colliding, residents protesting the city's new noise-mitigation proposals said Friday.

The Emanuel administration on Friday will propose an experiment at O'Hare International Airport to rotate the runways used late at night, possibly on a weekly basis, to spread out jet noise, the city's aviation chief told the Chicago Tribune.

A diagonal runway at the center of negotiations to mitigate jet noise at O'Hare International Airport will be closed in 2019, according to federal documents released Monday that analyze the impact of future runways.

Although Chicago's big airport operates the most flights and generates the most jet noise, complaints are climbing to record levels about loud, low-flying planes in communities around Midway Airport, new data released Thursday show.

Chicago's new airports chief, who has been on the job about a month, said she will present by Aug. 1 "all solutions available" to mitigating the decades-old but growing problem of jet noise from O'Hare International Airport.

Construction is beginning on Chicago's first "shared street" project that will transform a three-block stretch of Argyle Street in Uptown into a European-style plaza boulevard where pedestrians, bicyclists and motor vehicles must learn to co-exist in one wide, curb-less lane, city officials said...

If any chance still remains for Chicago-area residents overwhelmed by jet noise to influence the rest of the expansion project at O'Hare International Airport, it may come down to four public meetings in August and their testimony.